The Carpenter family was originally from England, and settled in Rhode Island. Stephen Carpenter, father of the subject of this sketch, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1778. Charles A., third son of Stephen, was born February 11, 1813, in Barre, Washington county, Vermont. His grandfather had removed from Rhode Island, when the father of Charles A. was a boy, to Uxbridge, Massachusetts, and about 1808, soon after his marriage, Stephen Carpenter had re-moved thence to Vermont.

When Charles A. was about two years of age his father removed from Vermont to Compton, Lower Canada (now province of Quebec). The family remained in Canada about eight years, when they returned to Uxbridge, Massachusetts, where they remained until October, 1836, when they emigrated to Michigan.

,On the 14th of September, 1835, Mr. Carpenter married Miss Percis Eames, of Worcester, Massachusetts. In the spring of 1836 he visited Michigan, and purchased two hundred and forty acres of government land near the present town of Lapeer, for himself and his older brother. After making this purchase he returned to Massachusetts, and in the fall of the same year, accompanied by his wife and child, his father and his older brother and family, he came out with the intention of settling on the lands purchased the previous spring. They hired a team in Detroit and came via Pontiac. They only succeeded in reaching Birmingham the first day. The road between Detroit and the latter place was terrible; the weather had been wet, and for the first twelve miles it was mostly under water from four to six inches. The team could barely haul the wagon and baggage and the small children, while the men and women were obliged to make their way on foot. Mr. Carpenter says his brother was so disgusted with Michigan that it was with difficulty he could persuade him to keep on through the swamp. They reached Orion township the second day. and rested for the night about six miles from Pontiac, with a man named Goodwin, who had a very good farm of one hundred and twenty acres, with about thirty acres broken and in a state of cultivation, and a comfortable log dwelling and barn. The owner was desirous of selling, and, after thinking the matter over, and knowing it would take several years to get as good improvements on their wild lands in Lapeer, they concluded to purchase the place, which they did jointly, paying a part of the price down, and went no farther.

They lived on this place until it was all paid for, when they made a new arrangement, his brother taking eighty acres of the Lapeer land, and the two purchasing also another eighty acres to go with it. In consideration of this the older brother gave up his interest in the Orion property. This was in 1841. C. A. Carpenter remained on the latter place (his father living with him) until the spring of 1845 when he sold out and purchased four hundred and fifty-nine acres of wild land, where he now lives, on sections 1 8, 28, and 29, Orion township. He and his sons afterwards purchased additional lands on sections 27 and 33, in the same township. The total number of acres now owned by the family is seven hundred and forty-nine, all in good condition, with a large area under cultivation. The property is finely situated, a portion of it bordering upon a beautiful sheet of water called Lake Judah, and also touching a smaller body of water, known as Grass lake, to the northwest of the larger one.

Mr. Carpenter has seen quite an eventful life. Coming into Michigan when it was comparatively a new country, he has lived to see the wilderness transformed into a fruitful and beautiful land, covered with thrifty farms, neat villages, and enterprising cities ; has seen the bridle paths and Indian trails superseded by fine turnpikes and railways, and witnessed, in short, the complete transformation of a wild and forbidden region into the abode of an advanced civilization, the peer of many of the older communities along the Atlantic, and behind none in the race for supremacy. For several years after his arrival in Oakland County, Mr. Carpenter worked at the business of a carpenter and joiner, and remembers well the time when he labored on a new dwelling thirteen days for a barrel of flour. In the winter of 1837-38 he and his brother visited some pine lands which they owned in Lapeer county, for the purpose of making shingles. On this occasion they loaded their tools, cooking utensils, and provisions on a hand sled, to the amount of three hundred pounds, and drew it on foot to the place, a distance of thirty miles, in one day.

Mr. Carpenter has had five children, four sons and one daughter, of whom the two older sons and the daughter are now living. His father removed his family to Michigan in 1839, and made his home with him until his death, in 1854. His mother died about 1857.

Mr. Carpenter retired from active farming in 1862, giving the business entirely into the hands of his sons. Having abundant means outside and independent of his real estate, he has sat down quietly to enjoy the accumulations of many busy years. Since 1862 he has given considerable attention to the cultivation of bees, of which his average stock is from twenty to fifty colonies of the common or black variety. He has been very successful in this pursuit, of which he makes a sort of specialty, and takes great delight in the employment. Mr. Carpenter has never been a politician, in the strict interpretation of the term, but has always had an opinion, and has filled various offices in the gift of his fellow citizens, and has been nominated on the Republican ticket for the representative branch of the State legislature, though the hopeless minority of the party in the district rendered success impossible.